Editorial

What’s in a name?

One of the fascinating phenomena in marketing is re‑branding. Often the effect of something as simple as a name change can have a significant effect on market perception and sales. Sometime companies spend millions on coming up with a new name complete with corporate logo. Several leading companies have acquire new monikers over the years: Exxon, Diageo and Accenture to name but a few.

The rationale for changing name varies. Sometimes it is necessary to provide a common identity to a conglomerate that has grown by acquisition. Sometime is it because of a split or spin off. Sometimes a company may re‑name itself after a highly successful product or to distance itself after a split off from another organisation.

As in corporate life; so in academic. I was recently listening to a paper at a conference where the speaker opined that e‑government was dead and that we should now be talking about transformative government. My immediate reaction was why stop there? If e‑government is dead, what about digital government (a preferred term with many US academics) or informatization, a term with a much longer pedigree than e‑government or how about sounding the death knell for i‑government or virtual government or technology enabled government? The expression ‘transformative government’ is a good example of what might be called verbal inflation, i.e. the propensity to think of ever more grandiose words to describe the same thing. All e‑government is, at some level, transformative but there is little evidence so far that the use of ICT in government, which recall now goes back nearly 50 years, is actually seriously transforming the processes of governance itself except at the margins. To apply the word ‘transformative’ to what is going on in e‑government at the moment is to overstate, by a large margin, what is actually happening. It may well be that the incremental impact of e‑government will be seriously transformative or that some major change will suddenly occur, but let’s keep our heads. So far there is little to suggest that government structure, bureaucracies, balances of power or decision making is significantly affected. There are straws in the wind, but no radical changes as yet.

Often, when academics in a field feel that they need to change the name of what they are doing, there are good reasons for this. Unfortunately, there are also times when a change of name is little more than fresh coat of paint for old ideas. Knowledge management is one good example of this. We don’t need to do this for e‑government which remains as good a name as any for what is still an expanding and exciting field of research. When we do get genuinely transformative government, which I hope will be soon, maybe we can re‑badge our field. In the meantime, the name of this journal at least will remain unchanged.

Abstract

Video streaming of local government meetings offers transparency. After an experimental phase, video streaming has now become a regular service in several Norwegian municipalities. This paper describes the design, development and implementation of one such video streaming service for a consortium of twelve municipalities. One important goal of this project was to deliver rich user experience without putting additional workload on municipal administrators. Our solution is able to deliver multiple video streams originating from different video sources (cameras), and the user may choose which video streams to view. Video streams are stored and made available for later viewing. An administrative application facilitates linking items on the agenda to relevant video content. A search engine makes it possible to search for video content across municipal borders. The paper also reports on a recent survey conducted among initial users of the video streaming service. The results are discussed, and some areas of future research are proposed.

Abstract

The research project on which this paper is based is investigating the reasons that some English local authorities engaged in pilot projects of e‑voting and some did not. This paper offers a brief summary of the initial findings of the literature review as it identifies factors, which impact upon the decision‑making process of English local authorities. The factors identified include the local authorities' attitude to e‑voting, their consideration of the citizens' attitude to voting, the risks to the integrity of the ballot and the changing political environment instigated by central government. The analysis is based on Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory. Early results of this on‑going research suggest that in a voluntary situation where there is an over arching organisation (central government) trying to introduce an innovation to an agency organisation, Rogers' diffusion of innovations framework requires modification.

Abstract

This paper is about exploring mobile e‑Government issues by analysing their historical evolution and illustrating some concrete activities, first in the initial phase, then through more recent projects, with the idea of capturing some attributes of its development trend. The objective is to propose a view on m‑Government, which can be both compatible with fieldwork findings and overall information and communication technology dynamics. We thus suggest a remapping of the m‑Government domain, so as to establish key priorities, eventually helping improve policy‑planning capabilities in this area. Our main hypothesis is that m‑Government should not be too specific an area of e‑Government (limited to the notion of mobile access), but on the contrary take upon the current dominant movement in favour of mobile technology usages, and steer experiments and initiatives in a way that ultimately better benefits, and even empowers the users and citizens in their various flexibility needs.

Abstract

In eight official votes between January 2003 and April 2005 authorities in Geneva invited up to 90 ,000 citizens to test a remote e‑Voting system as a complement to traditional voting methods. Multidisciplinary teams composed of legal, political, PR, security and computer science specialists, strongly supported by the Government, participated in creating the system which will be appraised by the Geneva Parliament en 2006. This paper reports on the project, its results in terms of numbers and socio‑political profile of e‑Voters, and its success factors. All three authors were directly or indirectly involved in the project from the beginning and are currently working on the deployment of Geneva's e‑ Government platform.

Abstract

Public administrations across Europe take the view that using digital media for consultation with citizens will help to increase their democratic participation. In the UK, the Government has encouraged local authorities to experiment with new electronic communication channels for this purpose. This paper presents a case study in which one such medium, the mobile phone, is being used in an attempt to raise participation amongst young people. It evaluates a project set up to use SMS text messaging as a means of electronic consultation with young people by a council in the North of England. Specifically, it examines the effect of text messaging on democratic participation by the young and the effect of this type of consultation on the processes of the political administration. This case study identifies a number of organizational, social and cultural issues that may limit the scope for using this technology to increase youth participation and change the relationship between young people and their local elected representatives. Based on the initial evidence from this case study, we take the cyber‑sceptic stance. We suggest that the mobile phone is not the 'silver bullet' for invigorating consultation with young people by the local public administration. We identify a series of potential barriers to increasing participation by youth and changing the relationship between the elected politicians and their constituents.

Abstract

A major concern in recent political discourse is that government has become both isolated from and unresponsive to its citizens. Democracy, by definition, demands a two‑way flow of communication between government and civil society. ICTs have the potential to facilitate such improved flows of communication Â„ hence, e‑democracy and e‑consultation. This paper initially draws on focus group discussions on the theme of e‑consultation conducted amongst activist citizens on the island of Ireland. High levels of frustration, scepticism and cynicism were expressed on the form, nature and process of extant consultation processes. In follow‑up demonstrations, however, the preliminary findings are much more positive suggesting that the potential exists for using e‑consultation technologies to enhance democratic processes.